Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russia claimed it destroyed several air defense systems in Ukraine over the weekend in what appears to be a renewed push to gain air superiority and knock out weapons that Kyiv has described as crucial ahead of a broad new offensive in the east.
In a strike announced Monday, Moscow said it struck four S-300 launchers provided by a European country, which it did not name. Slovakia gave Ukraine such a system last week but denied it had been destroyed. Russia previously reported two attacks on similar systems elsewhere.
Moscow’s initial invasion faltered on several fronts when it met stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces, who prevented the Russians from taking the capital and other cities. The failure to gain full control of the Ukrainian skies hampered Moscow’s ability to provide air cover for ground forces, limiting their advance and likely exposing them to greater casualties.
Having thwarted their offensive in many parts of the country, Russian forces are increasingly relying on city bombing. The war has leveled many urban areas, killed thousands of people and isolated Russia politically and economically. The war has also rocked Ukraine’s economy, which the World Bank estimates will shrink by more than 45% this year.
Ukrainian authorities have accused Russian forces of atrocities including a massacre in the city of Bucha outside Kyiv, airstrikes on hospitals and a rocket attack that killed at least 57 people at a train station.
In Bucha, work on exhuming bodies from a mass grave in a churchyard resumed on Monday. Galyna Feoktistova waited for hours in the cold and rain hoping to identify her 50-year-old son, who was shot more than a month ago, but finally went home to get some warmth. “He’s still there,” said her surviving son Andriy.
Now Russia is regrouping for a renewed push in the eastern Donbass region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces and proclaiming independent states since 2014. Both sides are gearing up for a potentially devastating war of attrition.
Russia has appointed a veteran general to lead the effort, according to US officials, though they don’t see one man making a difference.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, is urging more Western aid, saying his forces need more firepower to withstand the impending attack and push back Russian forces. Echoing his remarks in an AP interview, Zelenskyy said Sunday that the coming week could be crucial, with Western support for his country – or lack thereof – proving crucial.
“To be honest, whether we will be able (to survive) depends,” Zelenskyy said in a “60 Minutes” interview. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the confidence that we’ll get everything we need.” In a video address to South Korean lawmakers on Monday, he specifically called for equipment capable of launching Russian missiles.
But these weapons could come under increasing attack as Russia seeks to shift the balance in the 6-week war.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said the military used cruise missiles to destroy four launchers on the southern outskirts of the central city of Dnipro on Sunday. He said the military also encountered such systems in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions.
Lubica Janikova, spokeswoman for Slovakia’s prime minister, on Monday denied that the S-300 system she sent to Ukraine was destroyed. She said any other claim was untrue.
It’s not clear what this system entailed, but a senior US defense official said the Soviet-era system typically consisted of four launchers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide information ahead of the public announcement.
None of the Russian claims could be independently verified.
Ukraine has specifically requested more S-300s in recent months, despite already having a number of the Soviet-built systems and other long-range air defense systems. It has also received batches of man-portable, shoulder-fired Western anti-aircraft weapons such as Stingers, effective against low-flying aircraft.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer was due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday after meeting Zelenskyy in Kyiv. As a member of the European Union, Austria is militarily neutral and not a NATO member.
Questions remain about the ability of the exhausted and demoralized Russian forces to gain much ground after their advance on Kyiv was repelled by determined Ukrainian defenders.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said on Monday that Ukraine has already repulsed several attacks by Russian forces in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions – which make up Donbass – which have resulted in the destruction of Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery.
In Washington, a senior US official said Russia had hired General Alexander Dvornikov, one of its most experienced military chiefs, to oversee the invasion. The officer was not allowed to be identified and spoke on condition of anonymity. Russia generally does not announce such appointments, and there was no comment from Moscow.
Dvornikov, 60, gained a reputation for brutality as the leader of Russian forces deployed to Syria in 2015 to support President Bashar Assad’s government during the country’s devastating civil war.
So far, Russia has no central war commander on the ground. But US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan downplayed the significance of the appointment on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
“What we learned in the first few weeks of this war is that Ukraine will never be subdued by Russia,” Sullivan said. “It doesn’t matter which general President Putin is trying to appoint.”
Western military analysts say Russia’s attack is increasingly focused on eastern Ukraine — an arc stretching from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in the north to Kherson in the south.
On Sunday, Russian forces shelled government-controlled Kharkiv and sent reinforcements toward Izyum in the southeast to try to breach Ukraine’s defenses, the Ukrainian military said. The Russians also maintained their week-long siege of Mariupol, a key Donbass port.
A residential area in Kharkiv was hit by an approaching fire on Monday afternoon. Associated Press journalists saw firefighters put out the fire and search for victims after the attack and saw at least five people killed, including a child.
Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Synyehubov said earlier Monday that Russian shelling had killed 11 people in the past 24 hours.
The Institute for the Study of War, an American think tank, predicted that Russian forces in the campaign to seize the Donbass, which includes Ukraine’s industrial heartland, will continue offensive operations from Izyum “in the coming days.”
But it was said that the result “remains very questionable”.
In Mariupol, Russia used Chechen fighters who are considered particularly combative. The capture of the city on the Sea of Azov would provide Russia with a land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia captured and annexed from Ukraine eight years earlier.
In a video published on his Telegram channel, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said Russian forces would launch a renewed offensive on Mariupol and “in all other settlements, towns and villages.”
Mariupol residents lack food, water and electricity since Russian troops surrounded the city. Hundreds of thousands have fled, although Russian attacks have also thwarted evacuation missions.
Vladislav Usovich, an 18-year-old conscript serving in the Russian-backed separatist forces, slowly advanced with fellow militants through residential areas around a factory in Mariupol on Sunday.
“I thought it would be better, I thought it would be faster. Everything is going slowly,” he said. “Ukrainians are prepared fighters. NATO trained them well.”
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This story has been updated to correct that the war started a little over six weeks ago, not 10 weeks ago. ___
Anna reported from Bucha, Ukraine. Robert Burns in Washington and Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
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